December to Remember

I have simply had to resign myself to the fact that I am not a consistent blog writer.  No matter how badly I would love to write more, I just have not found the time to do it, and I'm learning to be ok with that.  I also understand that I am probably the only one who thinks about this and is disappointed by it.

With all that being said, it is finally time to catch up on our December happenings.  We had the most epic December 1st ever, and the rest of the month lived up to the first day.  Seeing as we have already made quite a bit of headway into January, though, I will just give a few highlights of the month:

• Christmas with the Cave parents- we visited their new home and got to enjoy a weekend with them.  We helped around the house a bit and were able sneak in a date night while the parents were out partying. 
• RealLife Christmas party- (that's the college group at our church)  we had some delicious snacks, played a rowdy round of Bunco involving a whoopie cushion, and did the annual white elephant gift exchange.
• Quality Time with the neighbors- our neighbors invited us to their church's Christmas show.  It was pretty impressive, but we were mostly glad to have them over for lunch and get to know them a little better.
• Three Trees- this is one of the best events our church holds all year.  Over 300 families came to pick out Christmas gifts for their children.  The whole church shows up to volunteer and it is awesome!
• Open House- we decided to hold an open house, which was a lot of fun but not very well attended.  We planned it too close to Christmas, so most people were already out of town, but we LOVED getting to have friends over to visit for an afternoon.
• Christmas Eve- we prepared lunches in the same area I lead worship every week.  A large group of people from our church came down and we fixed boxed lunches to take to the people in the community who are homebound.  We loved it!  We also went to our church's candle light service, made ninjabread cookies, and created our *fingers crossed* first annual singing Christmas card.  (Be sure to make it all the way to the end of the post so you can see it!)
• Christmas Vacation- unlike the movie, it was completely wonderful.  We rented a one room cabin, watched a zillion movies, did a 1,000 piece puzzle, hiked, and rested a lot.  We came home ready to tackle another year.  
• Twin set #2 arrives in the world- bridesmaid two of four from my wedding gave birth to twins on the 29th.  Happy family!
• Christmas/New Years' with the Speegle parents- my parents came to the visit the same day the babies arrived, so we left them at the house and took off on a quick road trip to see the new parents and little ones.  Once we got back we were still able to go to the theater, a Chinese lantern festival, hit up the movies, and eat some steak and black eyed peas... their good luck, you know!

Whew!  Just thinking back to all this wears me out a bit.  January has proven to be much more calm so far.  Here are some picture evidence of last month:

Glad you were curious enough to read.